[Reader-list] Four Women and a Room: The Open Frame 2008

[ambarien qadar]

Dear All,

Apologies for cross-posting.

I'd be happy if you could come for the screening of my new film 'Four Women and a Room' (DVCAM, 42 Minutes, English, Hindi with English subtitles) on 

Wednesday, 17th September at 4.30 pm at The Stein Auditorium, India Habitat Center, New Delhi.

About the film:

'Four Women and a Room' unfolds as a story of four women and the diverse relationships they have with notions of nurturing and being mothers. Late into pregnancy, MILI is confounded with the unknown. Having gone through endless rituals of matchmaking, LATIKA is wondering about her desire to be a biological mother. The dreamscape of the FILMMAKER throws up images and associations of a hospital visited sometime back and reminds her of meeting KALPANA; an UNKNOWN WOMAN; who undergoes a sex selective abortion. 

The film is set against a backdrop of the emergence of 'choice' based New Reproductive Technologies and the history of how abortion came to be'legalised' in India. 

As against popular perception, The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act 1971 originated from the population control imperatives of Indian State, not from  pro-choice arguments of feminist politics. 
Under a government aided programme, abortion of female foetuses became the preferred method of population control between 1970-80s. 
Despite the initial ban imposed on the use of sex selection technologies in 1978, the 2001 Census indicated that the girl child was more unwanted than ever. 
In a bid to fix the ‘problem’ pro-life arguments began slipping into the language of advocacy , policy and activism. In the midst of all this, no thought was given to how women would negotiate agency and choice in a culture that ceaselessly tries to fix their role as producers; a culture that obsesses around the production of a male child despite its apparent hypocrisy. 'Four Women and a Room' sets out to explore some of these questions.

Crew:
Direction, Script and Editing: Ambarien Al Qadar
Cinematography: Shakeb Ahmed, Sound : Girijashanker Vohra
Producer: The Public Service Broadcasting Trust, New Delhi 2008.

Thanks
Ambarien Al Qadar